Bibcode
Lacy, Mark; Afonso, Jose; Alexander, Dave; Best, Philip; Bonfield, David; Castro, Nieves; Cava, Antonio; Chapman, Scott; Dunlop, James; Dyke, Eleanor; Edge, Alastair; Farrah, Duncan; Ferguson, Harry; Foucaud, Sebastian; Franceschini, Alberto; Geach, Jim; Gonzales, Eduardo; Hatziminaoglou, Evanthia; Hickey, Samantha; Ivison, Rob; Jarvis, Matt; Le Fèvre, Olivier; Lonsdale, Carol; Maraston, Claudia; McLure, Ross; Mortier, Angela; Oliver, Seb; Ouchi, Masami; Parish, Glen; Perez-Fournon, Ismael; Petric, Andreea; Pierre, Mauguerite; Readhead, Tony; Ridgway, Susan; Romer, Katherine; Rottgering, Huub; Rowan-Robinson, Michael; Sajina, Anna; Seymour, Nick; Smail, Ian; Surace, Jason; Thomas, Peter; Trichas, Markos; Vaccari, Mattia; Verma, Aprajita; Xu, Kevin; van Kampen, Eelco
Bibliographical reference
Spitzer Proposal ID #60024
Advertised on:
12
2008
Citations
3
Refereed citations
2
Description
We will use warm Spitzer to image 18deg^2 of sky to microJy depth. This
is deep enough to undertake a complete census of massive galaxies from
z~6 to ~1 in a volume ~0.8Gpc^3, large enough to overcome the effects of
cosmic variance, which place severe limitations on the conclusions that
can be drawn from smaller fields. We will greatly enhance the diagnostic
power of the Spitzer data by performing most of this survey in the
region covered by the near-IR VISTA-VIDEO survey, and in other areas
covered by near-IR, Herschel and SCUBA2 surveys. We will build complete
near-infrared spectral energy distributions using the superb datasets
from VIDEO, in conjunction with our Spitzer data, to derive accurate
photometric redshifts and the key properties of stellar mass and star
formation rates for a large sample of high-z galaxies. Obscured star
formation rates and dust-shrouded BH growth phases will be uncovered by
combining the Spitzer data with the Herschel and SCUBA2 surveys. We will
thus build a complete picture of the formation of massive galaxies from
z~6, where only about 1% of the stars in massive galaxies have formed,
to z~1 where ~50% of them haveE Our large volume will allow us to also
find examples of rare objects such as high-z quasars (~10-100 at
z>6.5), high-z galaxy clusters (~20 at z>1.5 with dark halo masses
>10^14 solar masses), and evaluate how quasar activity and galaxy
environment affect star formation. This survey makes nearly optimal use
of warm Spitzer; (a) all of the complementary data is either taken or
will be taken in the very near future, and will be immediately publicly
accessible, (b) the slew overheads are relatively small, (c) the
observations are deep enough to detect high redshift galaxies but not so
deep that source confusion reduces the effective survey area.